1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a rack mountable backplane assembly for supporting and interconnecting one or more electronic circuit modules in an electronic system, and more particularly to a reconfigurable backplane assembly for a programmable digital radio and consisting of a printed wire matrix plate including connectors for electronic circuit modules, power cables, RF cables, and optical cables with the connectivity between digital signals being dynamically reconfigurable electronically and with connectivity between power signals, optical signals and RF signals being manually reconfigurable.
2. Description of the Related Art
Apparatus for mounting electronic circuit modules are well known and typically form a necessary component in almost all modular types of electronic equipment. As such, the connector boards in the form of backplanes, provide a means of supporting the modules as well as enabling interconnection therebetween. Conventionally, a dedicated interconnection between the various components is typically provided so that any mid-mission reconfiguration is virtually impossible without a major retrofit.
However, there is now a need for a more flexible approach which embraces dynamically reconfigurable digital signal connectivity, while at the same time accommodating manually reconfigurable high current power signals, optical signals, and RF signals. Such a need exists, for example, in a radio system developed by the assignee of the present invention. Such apparatus is shown and described, in a patent application U.S. Ser. No. 08/522,050 entitled, "Digitally Programmable Multifunction Radio System Architecture", filed in the names of William C. Phillips et al on Aug. 31, 1995, and which is intended to be incorporated herein by reference. The system disclosed in U.S. Ser. No. 08/522,050 is a single radio system that can be digitally reconfigured to operate over a broad frequency band with different signal formats, and is directed to an architecture of a system that provides dynamically programmable and configurable channels, with major portions of the digital and analog channel components combined at the signal frequency translation and waveform processing stages to simplify reconfiguration flexibility and to be scalable to many different types of integrated radio system applications.